Mobile sales and reconciliation lightning fast with Surefire

Event Cinemas, Australia’s largest cinema network with over 70 locations, needed a more efficient way to manage payments and reconciliations for gift cards and vouchers sold outside the cinema.

Justin Fenwick, General Manager of Information Technology for Entertainment at Amalgamated Holdings Limited, said, “We have taken the approach that it’s better to fail fast and learn a lot from it and Surefire was a good fit in this regard. They were willing to work with us in a fairly agile state and there was minimal upfront investment.”

The company wanted more than just a mobile app or cloud-based web store. The solution needed to interface with its Vista back-end ticketing and inventory system in order for transactions to be reconciled back to each individual cinema. The solution also needed to work with its other existing peripherals, including ticket and receipt printers.

Event Cinemas chose to partner with Surefire, setting them the challenge of building out a solution that was PCI compliant and interfaced with Vista using the vendor’s APIs.

The Surefire solution has now been rolled out to more than 30 locations Australia-wide and is used to sell gift cards outside the cinema and also enable payment of food and beverages at pop-up stands and events, including Moonlight Cinema.

The benefits include:

Reconciliation of payments made outside the cinema are now automatic, reducing errors and fraud

Productivity is up and labour costs reduced

Service has also been improved with customers able to quickly tap and pay and receive their receipts via email

The anytime, anywhere transactional solution has opened the door for further service innovations

“Surefire has been really good at listening and understanding our priorities which is important when you’re dealing with heavy deliverables and critical deadlines. Their transparency and agility throughout the project management process has also been key.”

Justin Fenwick, General Manager of Information Technology for Entertainment at Amalgamated Holdings Limited